Independent Submission R. Despres
Request for Comments: 5569 RD-IPtech
Category: Informational January 2010
ISSN: 2070-1721
IPv6 Rapid Deployment on IPv4 Infrastructures (6rd)
Abstract
IPv6 rapid deployment on IPv4 infrastructures (6rd) builds upon
mechanisms of 6to4 to enable a service provider to rapidly deploy
IPv6 unicast service to IPv4 sites to which it provides customer
premise equipment. Like 6to4, it utilizes stateless IPv6 in IPv4
encapsulation in order to transit IPv4-only network infrastructure.
Unlike 6to4, a 6rd service provider uses an IPv6 prefix of its own in
place of the fixed 6to4 prefix. A service provider has used this
mechanism for its own IPv6 "rapid deployment": five weeks from first
exposure to 6rd principles to more than 1,500,000 residential sites
being provided native IPv6, under the only condition that they
activate it.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This is a contribution to the RFC Series, independently of any
other RFC stream. The RFC Editor has chosen to publish this
document at its discretion and makes no statement about its value
for implementation or deployment. Documents approved for
publication by the RFC Editor are not a candidate for any level of
Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any
errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5569.
Despres Informational [Page 1]RFC 5569 6rd - IPv6 Rapid Deployment January 2010Copyright Notice
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................2
2. Problem Statement and Purpose of 6rd ............................3
3. Specification ...................................................4
4. Applicability to ISPs That Assign Private IPv4 Addresses ........7
5. Security Considerations .........................................8
6. IANA Considerations .............................................8
7. Acknowledgements ................................................9
8. References ......................................................9
8.1. Normative References .......................................9
8.2. Informative References .....................................9
1. Introduction
After having had a succinct presentation of the 6rd idea, a major
French Internet service provider (ISP), Free of the Iliad group
(hereafter Free), did all of the following in an impressively short
delay of only five weeks (November 7th to December 11th 2007):
1. obtained from its regional Internet Registry (RIR) an IPv6
prefix, the length of which was that allocated without a
justification and a delay to examine it, namely /32;
2. added 6rd support to the software of its Freebox home-gateway
(upgrading for this an available 6to4 code);
3. provisioned PC-compatible platform with a 6to4 gateway software;
4. modified it to support 6rd;
5. tested IPv6 operation with several operating systems and
applications;
6. finished operational deployment, by means of new version of the
downloadable software of their Freeboxes;
Despres Informational [Page 2]RFC 5569 6rd - IPv6 Rapid Deployment January 2010
7. announced IPv6 Internet connectivity, at no extra charge, for all
its customers wishing to activate it.
More than 1,500,000 residential customers thus became able to use
IPv6 if they wished, with all the look and feel of native IPv6
addresses routed in IPv6. The only condition was an activation of
IPv6 in their Freeboxes, and of course in their IPv6-capable hosts.
This story is reported to illustrate that ISPs that provide customer
premise equipment (CPE) to their clients, with included routing
capability, and that have so far postponed IPv6 deployment can, with
the dramatically reduced investment and operational costs that 6rd
make possible, decide to wait no longer.
To complete the story, Free announced, on March 6th 2008, that
provided two of its customer sites had IPv6 activated, its Telesites